Interview with Ty King-Wall - RNZB's new Artistic Director
Former principal artist of the Australian Ballet Ty King-Wall is returning to his country of origin to take up the role of newly appointed Artistic Director of The Royal New Zealand Ballet (RNZB). The past nine months have seen RNZB under the temporary directorship of David McAllister AC, while the search was on to find a more permanent candidate and King-Wall danced under McAllister’s directorship for fifteen of his seventeen years at the Australian Ballet. RNZB has marked its 70th Anniversary this year, and the appointment of Ty King-Wall sees a return to a director who is NZ born and bred following a string of high-profile Artistic Directors from America and Europe. While not RNZB’s first kiwi to lead the company, he is the first to hold this position in over forty years.
Currently aged just 36, Ty King-Wall retired eighteen months ago after an illustrious career as a ballet dancer while his wife, Amber Scott, has also just retired from her career as a principal artist with the Australian Ballet. He tells Leila Lois what he is looking forward to as they relocate to the NZ capital with their two children - to lead an exciting new era for the ballet company that possesses, as he says, ‘a pioneering spirit’.
The RNZB was formative to King-Wall’s decision to train as a dancer, which was sparked after he saw his first ever ballet, Cinderella, in Auckland, 1993. Shortly afterwards he went to see RNZB perform Russell Kerr’s Swan Lake and his dream of becoming a ballet dancer crystallized. He strengthened his relationship with the company in 2013 performing as a guest artist in that same production - a kind of homecoming for King-Wall, who describes the company as possessing an “openness, humility, and a ‘can-do’ attitude”, something he echoes in his own personality. Having admired RNZB from across the Tasman for years, King-Wall says he is delighted to be about to embark upon the directorship and sees a bright future ahead.
“New Zealand is a small country, it's geographically isolated,” King-Wall points out, citing this as perhaps a reason for its “creativity, ingenuity and innovation… in fashion and music… and dance”. Over the past few years, the RNZB has staged some ground-breaking contemporary ballet programs, including both Kiwi and international guest choreographers. For their most recent contemporary ballet program, the Australian Ballet’s resident choreographer, Alice Topp, flew over to stage LOGOS, featuring a huge screen frame and hydraulics. In the same bill, Māori choreographer Moss Te Ururangi Patterson staged Lightscapes, which blended an all-male corps de ballet with traditional Māori Haka dance. King-Wall hopes to continue RNZB’s reputation for innovation and open-mindedness, while paying homage to the country’s uniquely bi-cultural environment.
Te Ao Māori (Māori worldview) is “so present and immersive here,” he says, “and as one of the leading arts organizations, I appreciate how important it is for us to be representative of that.”
Additionally, King-Wall has a strong vision for strengthening dance training and education through the company, owing perhaps to his background and experience in education. King-Wall holds a Postgraduate degree in Arts and Cultural Management from the University of Melbourne and says he pursued this while taking a forced break from dancing due to serious back pain which “almost ended his career”. Ty is grateful for the way this instilled “a focus on empathy and relationship building”, that helped him to both weather his own injury and to help the young dancers he trains to understand their bodies and the importance of their wellbeing.
King-Wall also mentions the strategic planning and people management he has learnt over the past eighteen months; running his own small dance coaching business and being the Dancers' Director on the board of the Australian Ballet has equipped him with a wide range of skills necessary for leadership as an Artistic Director. Since retiring as a dancer eighteen months ago, it has been about learning how to multitask and wear all those different hats simultaneously - teacher, board director, small-business owner – “because having many different things happening at the same time is the life of an Artistic Director!”
Finally, when asked what he was most excited about in this new chapter for his career and for RNZB, King-Wall says there is one thing that stands out: returning home to New Zealand after twenty years in Australia, “bringing my family and sharing this beautiful country with them.”
As a fellow Kiwi I say ‘Nau mai haere mai’ Ty King-Wall, meaning ‘welcome home’ to New Zealand as the newest Artistic Director of The Royal New Zealand Ballet.
-LEILA LOIS